Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Beijing redux

Back to Beijing.  Barb and I took a soft sleeper.  I'm getting accustomed to this mode of travel, had a very good sleep and awoke in Beijing.  Barb didn't want to stay in a hostel so we had a hotel only about 300 meters from Tiananmen Square.  After resting a bit we found a comfortable restaurant, fortified ourselves with some excellent jouza, and across Tiananmen to the Forbidden City.  We spent a few hours there doing a much more thorough exploration than my first visit in February.  The courtyards are a labyrinth where the emperor and his various wives and courtesans lived.  Now their various homes are each art galleries with exquisite pieces.  China always reminds the visitor of its past glory and wealth, which in turn demonstrate its potential to be great again.
On Saturday Barb wanted to visit the Great Wall so we joined a tour to the Badaling section.  We had a chatty guide and a good crew:  a couple of young lovers from Cambodia and three Intel technicians making a brief stop in Beijing before returning to Costa Rica.  I think the climb up was harder than my previous encounter at Simatai, although of course we didn't subsequently do a long hike.  In fact, getting up and down was all Barb could do.  By the time we neared the bottom her leg muscles had turned to jelly and she was walking like a Robert Crumb character.  You can share her experience at http://picasaweb.google.com/PackLitePaul/BarbAtTheWall#.  She was so tired that evening I had to pry her out of the room just to have a decent dinner.
The next morning she went to the airport for the return flight, regretting that she had not planned a longer stay (only one time:  I told her!).  I taxied to Beijing West train station.  When I got to car 13 lower level seat 25 two young women asked if I taught at Henan University.  They were pre-med students on the new campus who had come to Beijing to visit their boyfriends and take exams for further study.  I graded papers for the first half of the trip, then as the crowd dispersed we were able to sit together and chat.  We were joined by an music student who had graduated from Henan two years ago.  They practiced their English and helped me with my Mandarin, people kept giving me food, the alumna sang beautifully, and altogether we had as jolly a journey as nine potentially tedious hours could be.  Any visit to China is greatly enriched by a few train trips.
This weekend is the May Day holiday.  When even a small percentage of 1.3 billion people take to the rails and buses it's a good time to avoid travel so I'll be in Kaifeng.  But—the weather is great and I'm in my last few weeks so there's a lot of travel I hope to do in May.

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